


They never did, you know?

by FuckyeahLadyMissy



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Feels, Minor Spoilers, Season 9, Series 9, The Mistress - Freeform, Tragic Loss, War, doctor who - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4921801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuckyeahLadyMissy/pseuds/FuckyeahLadyMissy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warning: Minor spoiler for The Witch's Familiar (no plot spoiler though)</p><p>There's a chapter in the Mistress' history that the Doctor does not really know too much about and that was far too short for the Mistress' liking.<br/>It still haunts her, night and day, in the small moments when noone can see the self-declared Queen of Evil silently weep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They never did, you know?

Please, Doctor. Please, man up for once and help me, I don’t think she’s going to make it.

“Mum? Am I dying?” 

Missy flinches and looks down, trying her best to hide the fear and pain from her face. She shifts slightly, trying to give her daughter as much comfort as is possible on this eternals-forsaken battlefield. They’re surrounded by time lords and daleks alike, most of them dead, the rest only seconds from it, as slowly, the fog of war veils everything in its thick, deafeningly silent blanket. And with the fog settles a penetrating stench of metal, fire and death.  
She prays she won’t see her end come. 

“Mummy’s going to find a way, sweethearts. I’ll get us home, and we’ll have a nice, long bath, hot cocoa, a movie… everything’s going to be fine. Mummy’s protecting you.” Another coughing fit shakes her daughter, and sends more blood spattering over Missy’s hands and armour. A dalek’s shock emitter had only barely missed her dear child, but it hadn’t failed to slightly crack her armour, allowing the next shot from another dalek’s ray gun to take out a good portion of her daughter’s side. Missy looks down and smiles at her child. She was the only thing that brought meaning to her life, and having her had been the best decision she’d ever made. And now this precious young time lady lay dying in her mother’s arms, amidst a war that had started long before she was born. She’d probably never even known what had started it in the first place.

“I’m so cold, Mum…”

Her voice is growing slurry now, and the blood she coughed up is settling in her larynx, making breathing harder by the minute. Missy pulls her child closer and starts rocking. She knows this is it. But she is far from accepting it, still telepathically pleading the Doctor to help her, to not let her child die like this. But all she gets is silence. He has run away, abandoning his people and the planet he used to call home. She wishes she could show the coward what he’s done, so she starts projecting images of her daughter’s side torn open and half her face hanging off, and all the blood that’s covering the two time ladies. Still, silence. Nothing. She can’t even really sense him anymore. Her oldest and best friend. The one person she had thought cared for her and the tiny family she formed with her daughter. 

“Mummy’s protecting you, darling. I’m here. Nothing can harm you now.”

Silence. There is nothing now. No distant sounds of fighting, no aircraft flying overhead, not even any groans of dying soldiers around them. Nothing. Somewhere in the far back of her mind, Missy is expecting grief over her daughter whose heart beats have vanished by now. But that thought goes completely unacknowledged, as everywhere in Missy’s present conscious and subconscious mind, her mother instincts are kicking in. She keeps rocking back and forth and starts softly singing lullabies to her child. 

My wee darling must be scared, it’s so creepily quiet now.

And a bit of rest will do her good, she’s been through a lot.

She needs to recover, so I can get her home safely. I’m tiny and I can’t carry her all the way.  
But I’ll try my best. I can’t fail her, she relies on Mummy.

I’ll get her home, and bathe her, and give her warm pyjamas,

And I’ll braid her hair, and we’ll have cocoa and cookies. 

I have to make sure she eats once we get home.

“Everything is going to be fine, darling. Mummy’s protecting you.”

A weary smile forms on Missy’s lips and she kisses her daughter’s forehead, still gently rocking back and forth. She looks down and sees her daughter’s cameo brooch. It was a gift from the Doctor. Anger bubbles up in her belly, but she takes a deep breath and takes the brooch from her child’s collar and puts it in her coat’s pocket. She doesn’t want to think of the Doctor now. It’s more important to get her little darling back on her feet.

“I’ll give this back to you once you’re fit again, okay? Because we don’t want bad memories right now, do we? No. No, we don’t. We’re having happy thoughts now. Because everything’s going to be fine. And in a few weeks we’ll have a good laugh about it. When everything is fine, and there’s no more war. And you’ll finally learn what peace is. Yes. Yes, that’ll be nice, won’t it? Yes, yes, yes.”

A small division of the Gallifreyan army is searching the now quiet battlefield. What they find, is one survivor cradling another female soldier. If it weren’t for half of the dead one’s face hanging off, maybe they’d see the similarity. The cheekbones, the ice blue eyes, a tiny birth mark on the right earlobe. The surviving time lady is pale, heavily malnourished, dehydrated and exhausted. She is staring off into the distance, rocking her dead companion and humming ancient Gallifreyan lullabies barely anyone remembers.  
When one of the soldiers places a hand on Missy’s shoulder, she flinches badly and turns her head, staring back at the young time lord with empty eyes and a soft smile on her lips.  
“Can you help me get my daughter home? I’m not strong enough to carry her all the way. We’ve had a long day and we just want to go home now,” is what Missy tries to say. She even tries to make her voice sound calm and peaceful, she can’t risk putting them off by yelling or sounding angry. She needs to get her daughter home.

What actually comes out is a croaking, hoarse whisper: “Home…?”

Suddenly, two pairs of arms grip hers and pull her up, her daughter’s body limply dropping to the ground, face down, straight into the puddle of blood and dirt Missy had knelt in.  
Panic is rising in her now, so she starts struggling, and this time actually gets her voice to work. “No. No, no, no, you can’t leave her! Please, please help me get my daughter home, I need to take care of her. She’s got a bad ouchie and I need to make her healthy again. Let me go!”

She breaks free from the soldiers’ grip and falls back on her knees next to her child, picking her stiff, cold body up and hugging it deeply and lovingly. “They’re not leaving you, honey. It’s okay. Nobody gets left behind. Shh, shh. Don’t cry. Mummy’s here. It’s okay now.”

The soldiers are back now and they’re taking a hold of Missy’s arms again. “Look, this is my daughter. We live in the capitol, we have a little flat not far from Redloom Park. Please, help us get home. My daughter is a good girl. Please don’t leave her here, just because I’m the Mistress. I understand that I don’t deserve to be treated nicely. But it’s not her fault I birthed her. She’s such a good little girl. She’s going to be president one day, and then everything will be much better.”  
A third soldier pops up in front of her. He’s older than the others and he’s wearing a commander’s uniform. 

“Mistress, your daughter has been dead for hours, even days maybe, and you know that. Let her go now. There is nothing you can do.” – “No, she’s just resting up. She took a shot from a dalek, but she’ll be okay. She’s just tired, we’ve had a long day and we want to go home and have cocoa and a movie. She’s such a good, lovely girl.” 

There’s sympathy in the commander’s eyes and he puts on a sad smile.  
“I know. And I’m sure your daughter is a lovely girl. But Mistress, you will have to come with us now. Because you know perfectly well that there was nothing you could have done. We will find your daughter a nice, peaceful place to rest. I promise. But you have to come with us now.”

He’s pulling at her daughter’s body and Missy clutches it even more tightly. “Have mercy, please…” 

The commander now grasps Missy’s hands and pries them open, taking her daughter from her and placing her on the ground again. She tries to resist, but exhaustion and starvation are slowly getting the better of her, despite a ton of energy being set free by her mother-instinct-induced rage.

They pull her away, ignoring her pleas to be left with her child. They’re talking about medical treatment and sending her back on the battlefield as soon as possible. Missy’s panicking seemingly goes unnoticed, even as she turns her head around at what should be a physically impossible angle and yells back at her daughter. 

“Don’t worry, sweetie, Mummy’s coming back and bringing help. I’m not leaving you! The nice commander here said he’d find you a good place to rest up and get well. It’s just a few minutes, Mummy’s coming back for you, okay? I love you, darling. Mummy loves you very much!” 

She turns to the commander. “You promised. You promised.” – “Yes, Mistress. We’ll find a good place to lay your daughter to rest.”

 

A long time in the future, on Skaro.

“They never did, you know?” 

“What?”

“Bury her.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a headcanon I made up after last week's episode.  
> And in my opinion, this might be what ultimately tipped the Mistress over the edge of insanity and made her go what she calls "bananas". I believe that Missy's eccentric behaviour and the way she conducts herself, making it look like she's having the time of her life, is a desperate attempt to hide that she's absolutely shattered inside. 
> 
> Missy calls it bananas, I'd call it severe trauma. 
> 
> She wears her brooch, goddammit. And I swear on my life, that brooch can be opened and there's the cutest picture of Missy and her daughter, smiling like two miniature suns, in there.


End file.
